Japan and the United States have started to jointly research new technologies that could measure the amount of uranium and plutonium contained in melted nuclear fuel at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, officials involved in the project announced Saturday.
Under Japan's safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the country is obliged to report to the U.N. watchdog the volume of nuclear substances in fuel at its atomic power plants to confirm that none has been converted for weapons use.
The government aims to begin monitoring the substances from the early 2020s in line with its timetable for scrapping nuclear reactors, said the officials from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, the entities chiefly responsible for the project.